This part of a display when Polly Law was doing illustrations. (Freeman photo by Tania Barricklo)

The viewer is deceived or transported into beholding "the ladies" as paper dolls, but they're more resilient, resolved, enigmatic. They'll steal your heart -- then stomp on it. Perhaps.

Such is the art life of artist Polly M. Law, with a studio in uptown Kingston, cluttered with the ephemera of creation. Law said she loves words and language and came across "bricolage."

"I started doing the art, then found the word for what I was doing," she said.

She defined bricolage as the art of "using what's at hand," while collage is using printed materials.

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Acknowledging the popular, childhood fashion-doll connection, Law said her work is paper dolls -- "with deep personal issues." Myth-telling of ancient or mythic tales informs her work, she added.

"My topics range from the toxic legacy of child abuse, commentary on the dichotomies of self women have faced historically, to the sublime joy of words and how ideas become not just words, but also pictures," she said.

Originally from Ohio, Law said she began her art studies in glassblowing. "I was having my student intake interview on May 4, 1970, at Kent State University," Law said, "the same day as the fatal shooting of four students during that anti-war protest."

Law said she chose the university because it was the only one in the area that offered glassblowing. She was injured in a studio accident, however, and changed her major to weaving.

"It was less hazardous," Law said humorously. But, she added, she also met her mentor Barbara Taylor, who taught weaving at Kent State.

"I was fortunate to learn all about color from her," Law said. "She is a brilliant colorist."

Law said she assiduously avoided studio classes in drawing and painting, thinking they would be too restrictive. "In my junior year, I dated another student artist and was convinced to try an illustration class," she said. "I liked it, but it was too late to change my major."

Law eventually moved to New York City, where she worked for an advertising agency creating storyboards, which, she said, honed her rendering skills and taught her to work quickly. She worked for the ad agency for five years, then 15 more as a freelancer.

"The technique is such that I could still do the work and not live in the city," Law said. However, she was president of the Graphic Artists Guild, so she still needed to have reasonable travel time to Manhattan.

"I also needed a place with good public transportation," she said, "so I drew a big two-hour circle of towns around New York City. I landed in Saugerties."

Bricolage came into her life as one of those serendipitous, but totally unanticipated, encounters.

"I was asked to contribute a paper doll to a book project I was working on," Law recalled. "I thought it would be a one-time thing, but I fell head over heels in love with the style. It was such a departure from the flat, colorful, mosaic-like work I had been doing."

"I always liked making things with my hands," she added. "I'm committed to bricolage and consider it my heart's work."

Law said she uses humble materials -- illustration board, inexpensive acrylics with the consistency of heavy cream that result in great texture, waxed linen thread -- that are elevated by how they're used to achieve elegant and sophisticated effects. The figures are jointed, meaning Law is able to pose them in situations she creates. The search for findings to connect the disparate parts, however, was frustrating, she said.

"I thought brass was boring and I didn't like brads, then I hit upon buttons," she said.

"They're the most inexpensive material I use!" added Law, pointing to a large jar of buttons someone had sent her. She uses linen thread for the buttons.

Law achieves a flat 3D effect by setting the figures as part of, but separate, from the beautifully detailed backgrounds they inhabit. Each work affords a fleeting glimpse into a not-quite-familiar landscape.

"The frame turns into a proscenium," she said. "Each piece is a small theater for private dramas, but wry humor also plays its part."

Law has established a series of five scenarios into which she places her figures:

o The "Esopus Mystic" series uses bits of the natural landscape of the Hudson Valley for inspiration.

Law said, "Unseen forces live and move in the corners, in quiet glades, in the niches, while we blunder and crash along in our fog of unknowing."

o "What the Tide Brings" explores the kingdom between the water and the land and the gifts it provides those who visit, according to Law.

o "Teeny Weenies" and "Tiny Raptures" are two loosely-related episodes inspired by the single-panel cartoon "The Teeny-Weenies," which Law said she loved as a child. The series, based on the cartoon, recount the adventures of a society of tiny people who live in our world, but at a tremendously reduced scale. "Tiny Raptures" depict these minuscule folk wafted heavenward, with assistance from dandelion seeds or feathers.

o The "Ladies-In-Waiting" series is based on the same body form, an exercise in them and variation, with only the externals of coloring, costume and maybe gesture, changing from lady to lady.

"They are ladies in waiting, coiffed and costumed to be alluring, with heads emptied and idle," Law said. "They sometimes chafe at the constraints of mode -- who doesn't also wish for the rustle of silk in their lives?

"The figures never smile," she added. "Their focus is inward, even though their gaze may be disconcertingly direct. They're not interested in meeting the viewer's expectations."

o "A Child's Garden of Entropy" series centers on the toxic legacy of abuse on a young mind and soul.

"Its subject is hard and its symbolism is deeply personal," Law said. "It's not pretty, but it helps me work out some feelings about incidents in my past" .

"It's the most personal and most difficult work for the viewer and the creator. The doll image, coupled with the grimness of the concept, makes viewers nervous."

Law's love of words and her habit of collecting them, however, has never abandoned her. In 2001, she said, she began to collect words seriously via Anu Garg's "A Word A Day" service that came to her via email. She deleted half because she already knew them or they weren't interesting enough to save, Law added.

"The words I kept were delightful, quirky and expanded my world," she said. Then, in 2002, she got the idea to illustrate the words with her bricolage art. The Word Project was born!

"The Word Project combines my love of language with my paper dolls, bringing back to life words that have fallen out of use in modern times," Law said.

Publishers loved the resulting book, but it never quite "fit" their markets, she said.

"I have a thick folder of rejection letters," Law said. She put together an advisory panel of business people. They urged her to redesign the book's format.

Kickstarter was just getting started then, she said. "It was all -- or nothing," she said.

She was able to pre-sell 100 copies of the book, far surpassing her goal. In 2010, Law realized a 10-year dream and published "The Word Project: Odd & Obscure Words -- Illustrated" as a Kickstarter project. The book is available through Amazon.

Law said she is slowing working on Volume 2 of "The Word Project." Meanwhile, she is participating in a holiday show at Woodstock Amrican Art Museum, beginning Saturday and continuing until the beginning of January, as well as a group show with artists Christy Scheele and Jenny Nelson in Provincetown, Mass., through December

Law's exhibit of "Ritual Gestures Performed at the Appointed Hour," from the "What the Tide Brings" series at Hudson Coffee Traders on Wall Street in Kingston and will continue through mid-November.